FOUNDATIONLESS BEEKEEPING: How-to, Benefits, Downside & Why I Do It

Foundationless beekeeping is the practice of allowing your honey bees to construct their own natural comb within the frames of a Langstroth hive, without providing pre-made beeswax or plastic foundation. I have been using foundationless frames in my hives for over 5 years. I want to share with you why I chose this style of beekeeping, the benefits, the downsides and how to set up your hive for foundationless beekeeping so you don't have a mess of cross comb in your beehive!​

Benefits of Foundationless Beekeeping:

1. Natural Comb Construction: Bees can create comb that aligns with their instincts, potentially leading to healthier colonies. 

2. Cleaner Beeswax: Without pre-fabricated foundations, especially those made from recycled wax, there's a reduced risk of chemical contamination in the beeswax, resulting in purer wax. ​

3. Cost Savings: Eliminating the need for purchased foundations can reduce equipment costs for beekeepers. Additionally, use no foundation in your honey supers, allows easy extraction of honey using the crush and strain method. This method does not require purchasing a large and expensive extractor, but uses items most people already have in their kitchen. See my video on how to harvest honey using the crush and strain method.

4. Comb Honey Production: Foundationless frames in your honey supers allows the beekeeper to harvest comb honey without needing to buy extra equipment. Simply cut the comb out of the frame with a bread knife and put into jars of liquid honey, a soft plastic clamshell box or hard case. 
5. Bees tend to build honeycomb faster: I have never, I mean, never seen bees build on a frame with waxed foundation if there was a frame with no foundation in the box. They always go to the foundationless frames first. They can also build both sides of the honeycomb at the same time as opposed to frames with foundation where they have to build comb on one side and then the other.
6. Easier to keep brood warm? There is no conclusive proof, but some theorize that it is easier to keep brood warm when there is no thick plastic sheet in between the brood on a frame. The heat produced by the bees on one side also reaches the bees on the other side of the comb.

Drawbacks of Not Using Foundation:

1. Comb Stability Issues: Natural comb is more fragile, leading to the occasional breaking of comb during hive inspections, transportation, or honey extraction.

2. Risk of Cross Comb: Without guidance from foundation, bees might build comb across multiple frames, complicating hive management and inspections.

3. Increased Management Effort: Beekeepers may need to invest more time in monitoring and correcting comb construction to ensure proper hive organization.

4. Harder to Manage Bee Space: With no foundation, the honeycomb will have a slight wave to it. It is important that the beekeeper put the frames back in the same order and direction they took them out of the hive or the bee space between frames can be ruined, causing comb to be so close together that the bees cannot access the comb.

A Little More About Natural Comb Construction

When bees do not have to follow the honeycomb pattern of foundation, the cell sizes vary quite a bit. First, you will see drone comb. Bees use drone pupae as a way to trap and remove varroa mites, so it is beneficial for the hive to produce drones. Without foundation, bees build as much comb as they like, where ever they like. This can help the bees lower mite levels naturally. 

In addition to building drone comb, the cell sizes of the worker bees will also vary. It has been proven that smaller cell sizes lead to smaller bees hatching from them. These smaller bees take less time to develop before hatching. It has not been proven whether these smaller cell sizes also help with varroa mite control. However, some say the shorter it takes a worker bee to hatch, the less time a varroa mite has to have offspring within that pupating bee. 

How To Set Up Your Hive For Foundationless Beekeeping

Keep your hive level: It is crucial that your hive is level when not using foundation. If your bees are on a slope, put them on a palette and level the legs of the palette. If your bees are in an area that is very rainy and you are not using a screened bottom, you can elevate the back of the hive about a half of an inch. 

Put starter strips in the frames: Use starter strips (popsicle sticks or beeswax strips) in the frames to guide comb construction. See the video above for how I do this in my frames (11:02).

Checkerboard the frames: When putting a box with foundationless frames on your hive, it's helpful to checkerboard the frames. You do this by taking frames with honeycomb already drawn out or frames with foundation and put them in-between every 2-3 frames that do not have foundation on them. I like to store frames of drawn out comb and honey in a chest freezer for this purpose, but you can also pull frames from the lower boxes in the hive. This will also help encourage the bees to move up into the empty box you just put on the hive.

Maintain Bee Space: In order to prevent your bees from building cross comb or burr comb, which is when they connect frames with their honeycomb, you want to manage bee space. Bee space is 1/4-3/8". You do not want any large gaps between frames in the hive bodies. This primarily means that a 10 frame box should have 10 frames in it. An 8 frame box has 8 frames. If your box is a little larger than your 10 frames, you can make a dummy board or follower board to put in the end of the box to keep the frames close together.

Start Small and Go From There

When it comes to foundationless beekeeping, you can do as little or as much as you like. You can, like me,  use absolutely no foundation at all in your hives or you can take the foundation out of one frame and give it a try. When first starting out, I recommend trying it on 1-3 frames in a honey super. It will give you delicious honeycomb to try and it won't cause any trouble for you when checking your brood.

Why I Really Do It

I do things to my hives to making beekeeping more convenient for me such as putting them in boxes a foot off the ground and close to my house and close to the other hives. This is not how bees would live in the wild. Honeycomb, is the foundation of the hive. It is the start of EVERYTHING! If I can let them build their comb how they want it, how they would build it if given the freedom, why not?